“The ludicrous soon took the place of all other feelings; in such a crowd, and such confusion, all serious thought was impossible, while the new buoyancy of our spirits made us abundantly willing to be amused by the scene which now opened. Every man was hungry, and was to be fed; all were ragged, and were to be clothed; there was not one to whom washing was not indispensable; nor one whom his beard did not deprive of all human semblance. All, everything, too, was to be done at once; it was washing, shaving, dressing, eating, all intermingled; it was all the materials of each jumbled together, while in the midst of all there were interminable questions to be asked and answered on both sides; the adventures of the _Victory_, our own escapes, the politics of England, and the news which was now four years old.
“Night at length brought quiet and serious thoughts, and I trust there was not a man among us who did not then express, where it was due, his gratitude for that interposition which had raised us all from a despair which none could now forget, and had brought us from the very borders of a most distant grave, to life and friends and civilization. Long accustomed, however, to a cold bed on the hard snow or the bare rocks, few could sleep amid the comfort of our new accommodations. I was myself compelled to leave the bed which had been kindly assigned me, and take my abode in a chair for the night, nor did it fare much better with the rest. It was for time to reconcile us to this sudden and violent change, to break through what had become habit, and inure us once more to the usages of our former days.”
After five years in the Arctic, Captain Ross and his crew were homeward bound, carrying with them a record unprecedented in Arctic history. Boothia Felix had been discovered; the connecting isthmus had been crossed to the mainland of America and explorations made in the direction of Franklin Passage, Victoria Strait, and King William Sound; the Magnetic Pole had been located; and a series of most valuable observations kept during the entire period.
Previous to his arrival in England, the prolonged absence of Captain Ross had caused great anxiety to his countrymen, and, although his expedition had been a private affair in no way connected with the Admiralty, the government nevertheless felt it to be a national concern that his fate and that of the crew should be ascertained if possible.